


we don't share our time for long (the moment ends)

by devereauxing



Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Time Traveler's Wife Fusion, M/M, Time Travel, mentions of John/Veronica
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-17 03:07:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21047273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devereauxing/pseuds/devereauxing
Summary: "what year is it?""the right one."





	we don't share our time for long (the moment ends)

**Author's Note:**

> title from life goes on by e^st which i listened to on repeat for this lmao

*

(xv)

The electricity bill was overdue.

John stared at the paper sat on the table in front of him and waited.

The front door slammed open.

“John!” Roger called, sounding jovial despite the snowflakes fluttering outside. Anything under ten degrees usually had him on edge, and the barest hint of snow would usually have him bundling up head to toe as if it would protect him should he get transported an hour earlier, a mile away.

He stayed in place and took a sip of his long cold tea.

“John!” Roger exclaimed, a soft smile playing about his face as he arrived in the kitchen doorway. “You wouldn’t belie—” He cut himself off, stopping in his tracks so suddenly that his boots scuffed against the linoleum with a squeak. “What’s wrong?”

“You said you paid the electricity bill last month,” John said softly, tucking a lock of hair behind his ear before darting a look over at Roger.

He didn’t want this to be an argument.

The joviality seeped from Roger’s face as his gaze darted between the letter on the table and John. “Shit,” he sighed, shoulders folding inwards. “I have, I’ve paid it.”

John took another sip.

“I lost my job,” Roger admitted into the prolonged silence, his voice terrible in its smallness. “I missed too many recordings with no prior notice. You know how it is.”

“I know.”

“I found another one!” Roger said, moving into the kitchen. He loitered a step beyond the table, as if he were unsure as to whether he was welcome; unsure if he could sit at the table they had picked out together at Ikea just last year, Roger tugging at his hand because he wanted meatballs. “I got another job, I just couldn’t pay the bill until my first pay came in and—”

“That’s why your hours changed,” John murmured to himself, nodding. He had wondered.

“Yeah,” Roger agreed, sounding small again. “I’m sorry.”

“Why…” John trailed off, lifted a hand to rub at his temple absently. “Why didn’t you _tell _me? I could have—”

“You shouldn’t have to!” Roger cried, interrupted him before he could so much as finish. “You shouldn’t have to cover my half of the rent or the electricity bill!” The careful stillness which had accompanied his confession — ashamed and apologetic as it was, still bouncing between them as they muddled their way through resolving what it meant — dissipated as he exploded into action.

Roger wasn’t made for immobility. Even in his sleep he moved across their mattress as if he were chasing something just out of reach; always in action, never allowing gravity to weigh him down. Sometimes John felt like he was trying to pin down a butterfly. Trying to trap a being meant to live in freedom, his very touch tainting and poisoning nature itself in his quest to love him as he deserved to be loved, appreciate him as he deserved to be appreciated.

“I’m a fucking adult!” Roger raged, pulling layers of clothing from himself and flinging them on the floor. “I should be able to hold down a job, and provide a bloody stable living environment for my boyfriend. I should be— I should be _better _than this.”

“Rog,” John breathed, scooching his chair back so he could stand. “Rog—”

“No!” Roger shouted, arms held akimbo as he met his gaze. His eyes were wide, and the small crease that appeared around his mouth when he was particularly stressed was there in full force. It had been there for weeks now, but John had foolishly — blindly — hoped it was because of the ring he’d found stashed in the lining of their laundry basket, not because—

“What kind of fucking thirty one year old man can’t hold down a job? Can’t go on holiday? Can’t meet your fucking family?”

“Roger,” John snapped, the tone of voice he usually reserved for getting him out of the bath after his third top up of hot water. Roger stopped, frozen in motion as he looked to him. John reached out, entangled their fingers together: “It’s okay.”

Roger’s face crumpled.

Rage, with Roger, was always the surface emotion. If you could burrow your way under it you’d find something much more vulnerable, intimate. Anger could keep you warm even if it caused you to burn yourself to keep it kindled. Other emotions were not so easy. They left you drained. Anger could burn for eternity; every small infraction of existence could be taken as a slight, could add fuel to the embers you cradled. Sadness and happiness, love and hurt, trepidation and comfort; when they faded, they left you bereft. Anger could be a friend in the night. Anger could protect, and all it asked in return was your soul.

Sometimes that was a price worth paying.

John knew Roger had paid it time and time again.

And John knew, many of those times, it _had _been worth it.

He was standing here, his hand held in John’s own, was he not?

“It’s not,” he whispered, face turned to the floor. “You deserve—”

“You deserve more too, Rog,” John murmured, rubbing his thumb against the back of his palm. “It’s not your fault that you can’t be all of those things, can’t do them. I just need you to let me know.”

He stepped closer, manoeuvring around the legs of the chair he has been sat on. His hand, still clasping onto Roger’s own, came to rest on his cheek as he crowded into him, so close that the kitchen faded away. It was just him and Roger; just him and Roger and the life they shared between them, stretched taut and stolen from the greedy sands of time.

Roger held his gaze, impossibly blue and achingly vulnerable.

“I need you to let me know,” he repeated, ducking in to press the softest of kisses to the plushness of Roger’s lower lip. Roger’s eyelids fluttered, and John could almost imagine he felt the breeze from his eyelashes.

To him, every moment of Roger was magnified. A single breath could bowl him over; a single touch leave him hungry for more.

Time, with the pleasures and sorrows it wrought, was not something he took for granted.

Roger shuddered in his grasp, pressing closer where John’s other hand had come to rest on his hip. His hand in John’s own squeezed tight for a beat, and then two.

“Please,” John urged, barely a word.

Roger’s head fell forward and he pressed their foreheads together.

“I’m sorry,” he said, finally. “I should have told you.”

John waited.

“I’ll tell you next time.”

John pressed another kiss, chaste and sweet, to his mouth. “That’s all I ask,” he said.

Roger, despite the tremulous smile with which he kissed his palm, seemed unconvinced.

*

(v)

“Oh, fuck!”

John barely blinked, flipping the page of his textbook and spitting the cap of his highlighter onto the grass next to him. “Clothes are in the normal spot. You’re late.”

There was an ominous silence.

“I know you don’t like that shirt,” John sighed, highlighting an entire paragraph. His teachers were always going on about they should _only highlight the important stuff, _but if it was in the textbook surely it was all important? He didn’t want to be sat in the exam and realise that he hadn’t highlighted that one sentence that would have given him a passing grade. Not that, he supposed, mindless highlighting was really going to make a difference in his memory recall. Whatever. “But you’re the one that voodoo’d away stood in a puddle of mud the other week. Mum’s on laundry strike and Julie’s protesting the patriarchy.”

“... And you?” Roger asked tentatively. There was no rustling to indicate that he was getting dressed which was odd.

“Exams,” John huffed, flipping the page again. He did it was flair this time, hard enough to make a noise.

“Right, right,” Roger blustered. “Exams, of course.”

“You’re being really weird,” John told him, looking up. Sure, time was screw-y for Roger but he usually had at least some idea what was going on in John’s life whenever he appeared. “Are you oka—”

Roger blinked down at him.

“You know who I am right?” he asked, looking young. Looking really fucking young, with long raggedy hair that was a shade or two darker than John was used to seeing it; the wedding band that kept John awake at night, agonising over a future that Roger was already in and the past he kept being dragged into, missing from where his left hand was curled around the trunk of the tree he had hidden himself behind like so many times before. “And you said something about clothes?”

*

(xvii)

Brian was in the middle of telling some long winded story about his latest volunteering gig planting trees and the supposed idiocy of his supervisor when his phone started ringing. John wasn’t sure if he actually thought they were all interested in the minutiae of planted forests or if he was just attempting to bulldoze his way through the awkwardness of Ronnie’s roommate Dom blatantly hitting on his girlfriend for the past hour and a half.

“Sorry, sorry,” John muttered insincerely as he pushed back his chair and darted from the room, Freddie’s grinning face on the screen contrasting beautifully with the resentful glances he was being shot from his abandoned guests at the dinner table as Brian continued on unabated.

He hadn’t so much as appeared to pause for breath since finishing the last of his lasagne.

“Fred!” he greeted, leaning against the hallway wall. “You’ve missed dinner, but if you hurry you might make it for dessert before Brian bores us all to death.”

“John,” Freddie said, sounding shaky. John straightened. “I’m sorry; Roger didn’t want me to call, but they’re running scans and I really think you should be here.”

From the living room came the shadow of Ronnie’s voice followed by the others bursting into laughter.

“What? Freddie, you’re not making sense,” John said hurriedly, already making his way to the shoe rack to shove on his trainers. “Roger’s back? What’s happened?”

Freddie huffed out something approximating a sigh, and not for the first time John felt as if Freddie thought he was being particularly obtuse. “The hospital, John. Roger got back about an hour ago, he’s beat to a bloody pulp! Party line,” he said, his voice trailing suddenly to a hushed whisper. “Is a mugging. He didn’t want me to call you because of the dinner party but, honestly, fuck that. You should be here.”

John’s grip on his handset tightened, matching the sudden constriction which had rendered his attempts to breathe almost useless.

“I’m on my way.”

“I should hope so.”.

*

(vii)

The city was magnificent, a world away from back home where everyone knew everyone.

His last two months had been spent in a haze of sunshine and gossip; an endless loop of insisting to all and sundry that Ronnie really hadn’t broken his heart while offering no explanation for the smog that hung over him like the winter solstice writ personal — a lingering darkness which paid no mind to the promise of new growth that lay ahead.

But in the city no one knew him at all.

It was freeing.

He found himself at a bar not a month after his classes started spinning his life story to a politely bored poli-sci student who had given his hand a kind pat and suggested he take one of the creative writing classes on offer next semester. _To help you figure out the ending_, she’d said before disappearing into the crowd.

Four drinks and a panic attack later he was bent over in an alleyway, his phone tucked to his ear as Ronnie — sleepy and confused with a mathematics test in the morning, God, he _knew _that but he called her anyway — talked him through how to breathe but he couldn’t, how could he? He didn’t know the ending.

“What if he doesn’t come back?” he gasped, rattled, and broke.

“If _who _doesn’t come back?” Ronnie asked, sounding desperately close to tears herself. “John? Has something happened? Should I call someone for you?”

There was sick on his shoes. He knew it was his, could taste the bile at the back of his throat; the stinging pain that struck as he attempted to swallow with a tongue suddenly too big for his mouth.

“There’s sick on my shoes,” he told her, focusing on what he could see and what he could trust. “And it’s cold.”

There was an intake of breath on the other end of the line, and then a pause. Something rustled.

And then: “Okay. Can you tell me where you are?”

“I’m outside the bar,” he told her, and the grit of the bricks dug through his shirt. It was abrasive against his skin as he breathed, a steady and dull pain that was very different to the needling sensation at the back of his throat. Purposefully, he breathed in deeper just to feel the brickwork grate against him. It was something real, something beyond himself that he could exert control over; he could make the pain worse, and he could make it stop.

He crouched down so that his back was no longer against the wall.

“Did something happen?”

The smell of his sick was stronger now, and the sour notes mixed with the general unpleasantness of the alleyway; a miasma of odour that matched the roiling of his stomach and the turbulence of his mind.

He breathed in deep again. Waited, and then exhaled.

“No.”

“Are you safe?”

John considered this.

He’d spent years counting down to a future of which he was now in the midst of. The future was here, the future was now, and he felt more alone than he ever had in the past. In the past when there had been days to wait for — a notepad with jotted down dates and times mentioned in passing and dutifully anticipated — and the future had opened up in front of him, a budding flower with endless possibilities and the hope of a wedding ring he could replace with his own.

The future was now and John didn’t know how to do this.

John didn’t know how to live with an unknowable tomorrow.

“Ronnie,” he whispered, eyes closed and head hung low. “Ronnie, I have to tell you something. I have to tell you the truth.”

*

(i)

There was a naked man hiding, badly, behind the tree. John blinked. The man shuffled.

“Hello?” he tried.

The man let out a loud groan, peeking out from behind the trunk. “How old are you, John?”

“Six!” John beamed at him, proudly displaying six splayed fingers in his direction. The man didn’t seem pleased by this information, letting out a low curse that had John darting a nervous glance back at his house.

“Of course you are,” he muttered to himself.

A question dawned, “Hey, mister, how’d you know my name?”

“Magic.”

John thought about this for a couple of moments.

“Oh. Okay,” he said, nodding.

Why else would there be a naked man in his garden?

“Fuck,” the man swore, before looking at him with alarm. “Shit, I’m really fu— screwing this up.”

“It’s alright,” John told him, shuffling forward a step to whisper: “I know those words. My dad uses them sometimes.”

“Really?” the man asked, looking vaguely charmed. His mouth twitched as he spoke, like he was trying not to smile at him.

John nodded enthusiastically, the way that his mum told him would make him sick one of these days — his brain would come flying right outa of his ears, she said, and it made him nod all the harder to see if it was true — and bounced up onto his tippy toes. “Yeah! He doesn’t say what you said earlier though.”

The man laughed, a giggle of a thing that reminded John of the peals of laughter his baby sister had just recently started letting out at the smallest provocation, “It’s not a good word.”

“You shouldn’t say it then,” John said, sticking his hands in his pockets.

“That’s very true,” the man answered, smiling still. Adults did that a lot when they thought they knew more than you, John knew. His dad smiled like that when he promised Julie would be more fun soon, even though he’d been saying that for _months _and she wasn’t any more fun at all — just louder.

His grandma said she wouldn’t be a baby forever but it sure seemed it.

John huffed.

“Why are you in my garden, mister?” he asked, trying to sound as scary as his dad did when he got home from work and John’s toys were still on the floor.

“Well—“

“And why aren’t you wearing any _clothes_,” he continued, peering at him curiously. “Do you wanna see my dad?”

“No!” the man exclaimed, his voice going all funny and high pitched. “No, no, that’s… that’s alright, thanks, John.”

John squinted at him suspiciously, his nose crinkling up as he thought.

“I got lost,” the man told him, shuffling again.

“Because of the magic?” John asked, perking up again. The circus was coming to town next week, his mum had promised they could go if John was really, really good. Maybe the man was from the circus? “Do you have a rabbit?”

“Uh, no?” the man said, scratching at his chin. “No, no rabbit.”

“But all magicians have rabbits,” John said, confused. “They pull them out of hats! How can you be a magician if you don’t have a rabbit?”

“I lost him.”

“Oh.”

They stood in silence.

“Are you cold?” John asked as the man rubbed at his arms. He stopped immediately.

“You ask a lot of questions,” the man said in lieu of answering him.

John huffed, dropping to the ground to sit with his legs crossed. He tugged a fistful of grass loose and sprinkled it on his pant leg. “You,” he said mulishly. “Don’t answer any.”

“Not true!” the man exclaimed, and a twig bounced off of John’s bent head.

“Hey!”

“You were sulking,” the man said unapologetically with a shrug.

*

(xii)

John squinted at Roger.

Freddie, stood next to him, squirmed.

“You’re _baked_,” John said at length, as Roger attempted to look sober. This attempt consisted of little more than standing stock still in the doorway and blinking precisely every two seconds.

“Babe,” Roger drawled, giving up the ghost of sobriety as he cocked a hip. His hip banged straight into the doorframe. “Like a fuckin’ souffle.”

“Wow,” John deadpanned, looking at Freddie. Freddie ducked his gaze. “A souffle, huh?”

“Yup!” Roger said, popping his lips. Freddie withdrew his arm from around his waist, leaving him to hold the entirety of his own weight. “But! I’m also here for dinner!”

A loud clatter came from the kitchen.

“I think Julie just dented our new baking tray,” Roger told him, a sad frown pulling at his lips. “That cost a whole seven pounds,” he said in an aside to Freddie. Freddie acted appropriately awed by this price tag.

“Are you staying for dinner?” John asked Freddie, ignoring Roger.

“I think I’d better,” Freddie answered meekly, refusing to meet his eye.

From the kitchen came a: “Everything’s fine!”

Roger gave him a doleful look.

“Are you sure?” John called back, not taking his eyes off the two stood in the doorway in case they tried to make a run for it. He wasn’t sure Roger was exactly _capable _of it right now, but he also knew if Roger requested it Freddie would probably attempt to carry him. They wouldn’t make it far, for sure, but John didn’t want to spend the night in the A&E explaining how his boyfriend had broken another bone while the nurses asked cautious questions about their home life. “Roger’s back.”

A loud clatter came from the kitchen again.

“Oh my fuck!”

Roger huffed.

“You don’t use it anyway,” John snapped. “You wouldn’t notice if I replaced it with a bright pink one.”

“That’s a lie,” Roger said, glaring at him blearily. “You made us go to, like, seven shops—“

“Two.”

“_Seven shops,_” Roger repeated, louder this time. “To find the perfect baking tray in our budget. One of them,” he added in an aside to Freddie, who looked as if were doing his best to sink into the floor. “Was too silver. It was too silver, Freddie! What does that even mean?”

Freddie looked between them cautiously. “You have a baking tray budget?” he settled on finally.

The shades of victory blossomed in the apples of Roger’s cheeks. They had had this argument at shop — okay, maybe they had visited more than two — number four.

It _would_ have been just two shops but their local Argos had been out of the one he’d spotted in the catalogue.

“Budgeting is important, Freddie,” John hissed at him.

Freddie held up his hands placatingly.

“Hi!” Julie said, shoving John out of the way to greet Roger. “You must be—“ she cut off with a choked gasp, her face going white. “What the _fuck_?”

Roger hummed. “I get that a lot,” he whispered, leaning forward conspiratorially.

“Jules!” John hissed, grabbing at her elbow to draw her back.

Julie looked between Roger and John, her expression slowly morphing from a strange sort of terrified to something merely vaguely confused yet awkward. “Sorry, sorry,” she said hurriedly, tugging her arm from John. “You just…. you look a lot like someone I used to know.”

“Oh?” Roger intoned, sounding bored.

John wanted to smack him.

“He’s got one of those faces,” Freddie piped up helpfully, bouncing on his toes as he shot Julie a shy wave.

Julie bemusedly waved back.

“This is Freddie,” John told her, when it became apparent that Freddie wasn’t going to introduce himself properly. “He’s Roger’s better half.”

“Unfair,” Roger muttered.

Freddie gave Julie his close lipped smile, bouncing on his toes once more. John was vaguely horrified to realise this was him on his very best behaviour.

Julie hesitated, looking between the three of them.

“He’s staying for dinner,” John continued heavily, ushering the two of them into the hallway. “Because he doesn’t have a home of his own to go to.”

“Right,” she said, clearly confused. “Well,” she clapped her hands and grinned brightly. It looked almost as fake as Roger’s sobriety, but John would take what he could get. “I made soufflé!”

John closed his eyes.

“Fancy that,” Roger quipped.

*

(iii)

There was a knock at his window.

John groaned and rolled over, burrowing his head under his pillow. It was too early.

There was another knock.

“Go ‘way, Ronnie,” he mumbled, lips tacky with drool. He didn’t _care _what she wanted to do today, it was Christmas break. He was going to sleep his way into a coma.

The knocking picked up speed.

“Oh my _God_!” he exclaimed, throwing the covers back and shoving himself upwards to glare across at his window. Instead of Ronnie, grinning at him mischievously from under her ill advised punk-esque haircut, he was greeted by the sight of Roger. Roger, who was peering through the window pane miserably as snowflakes fluttered around him.

John scrambled across the room to throw the window open.

“Thought you might be dead,” Roger mumbled, teeth chattering as he climbed over the ledge. The scarf and sweater that John had left out for him last month was stiff to the touch as John helped him in.

“I thought you were—” John cut himself off. “I thought I was dreaming,” he settled on.

Roger hummed, scanning the room with interest. He’d never been inside before. In fact, John found himself wondering how he’d known which window was his before diving to push his stack of comic books under the bed. Roger, kindly, didn’t say anything as he snatched the duvet from the floor and draped it around his shoulders..

“Your shed’s gone,” he said; a statement, not a question.

John sat on the edge of his bed, watching as Roger inspected his posters. He fought the desire to rip down the one of Brad Pitt.

“Julie just broke her arm?” he asked, cocking his head as he squinted at a picture of Kate Moss. Then: “They really fucked up that editing job, she’s missing a rib.”

“Yeah,” John replied, before— “Wait, really?”

Roger looked over at him. His nose had turned red as he’d begun to warm up, his wedding band glinting in the pale light of the moon as he hugged himself. “Not spend much time looking at this one?” he teased, a shit eating grin plastered on his face.

“Not thinking about her ribs, I guess,” John muttered, dropping his gaze to the floor.

Silence reigned.

John looked up just in time to catch the sight of his own empty clothes falling to the floor along with his duvet.

He fell back asleep curled up on the floor, the sweatshirt held to his nose.

*

(xiii)

John rolled over, curling around the warm body next to him instinctively. “Morning, babe,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to the back of Roger’s neck.

“Good morning,” Roger said from behind him, arms snaking around his waist, as Roger in front of him turned his head ever so slightly to press a chaste kiss to his lips.

“No,” John said adamantly, turning his head so that the kiss landed on his cheek. He pinched the hand that lay on his hip bone. “I have shit to do today. Get off of me.”

The Roger behind him sighed, letting him go to flop across his side of the bed dramatically. The Roger he was spooning, his Roger, chuckled; his voice was raspy with sleep as he twisted back into position and said, “I told you.”

“Fuck off,” the other Roger groaned, one arm flung over his eyes. “Do you know how long it’s been since I got laid?”

“Yeah,” his Roger answered, bunching the duvet up in his hand and pulling it up to his chin as John sat up. “Like, a week.”

“Years!”

“Literally nine days.”

“J-_oohn_,” moaned Roger, looking up at John with a pout. He was unfairly pretty, younger than John had seen him in a while. All high cheekbones, hollow with the consequences of too few meals and an unreliable place to sleep, with long hair that lay across their pillows enticingly.

“Little urchin orphan boys don’t do it for me, sorry,” John deadpanned, scrambling over him to grab his boxers off of the floor and shimmy them on. He determinedly ignored Roger’s heated gaze, remembering instead the look he had been subjected to as they’d been stripped from him the night before.

Roger rolled his eyes, propping himself up on his elbows to drag his gaze down John’s body. John fought the desire to shiver. His Roger grumbled and drew the covers closer to himself, burrowing down until little more than a tuft of his hair was visible.

“I promise I’m more fun than him,” he said, nudging his head in Roger’s direction.

John looked at the tuft of hair sticking out from the duvet. Small snores were emanating from it now; snuffles that meant Roger was only just under the grasp of sleep, liable to wake up at the slightest provocation.

“Maybe when you’re awake,” he replied, ducking to swipe his phone from the bedside table.

“I hate you.”

John grinned, “Just imagine how much fun you’ll have in the future?”

*

(viii)

John came home for all of the holidays.

John came home for all of the holidays for two years.

*

(xvi)

There was a crash from the bathroom.

John sighed and put his book to the side. It was always the bathroom. He was getting tired of putting their shower curtain back up.

“You okay?” he called out after a moment of silence. A few months back Roger had completely stacked it after travelling back and ended up smashing his head into the sink. The blood had gotten everywhere, and Roger had complained nonstop for weeks about how he’d managed to find clothing and keep himself busy in his old neighbourhood back in 2004 without getting hurt but it was coming home that had seen him with a concussion.

The flat remained quiet, a sure sign that something was wrong.

John pushed the duvet from his legs and rolled off the bed to pad into the hallway. “Rog?”

Steeling himself for the worst — blood, and pain, and all the worst that this inexplicable, miraculous affliction could bring — John pushed the bathroom door ajar.

Roger was stood faced away from him in the darkness, holding himself in his arms.

“Rog?” John said softly, fumbling around on the wall to find the light switch. He flicked it on, and Roger flinched. “Rog, what’s happened?”

A heavy breath shuddered out of him, his whole frame shook.

John exhaled: “Rog—“

“Your dad just died.”

The breath John had stolen from Roger punched from him in turn.

_I never want to see you again—_

_John?_

_Go Away!_

“Roger.”

“Your dad just died,” Roger repeated, and though the light now cut across his features the darkness lingered upon him like the cold touch of loss — that which was present in the absence itself.

“Dad died years ago,” John said emptily.

“No,” Roger replied. “Just now.”

Grief, an ever hungry maw, clawed at John’s innards. Anger, that ever present tundra, beckoned.

“That too.”

*

(iv)

Roger was tracking him like he was some kind of predator. Given that Roger was a man with a history of appearing naked around children, John thought that was a bit ironic.

John watched him take another bite out of a sandwich he’d begged and pleaded for, whining about how he’d been about to sit down for dinner before he’d traveled. He looked skinny, shivering a little in the shade of the hedge he was sat behind despite the nice weather.

There was no ring on his left hand.

“It winter?” John asked nonchalantly, sticking his hands in his pockets and cocking a hip up against the tree he stood next to. It wasn’t _their _tree, Julie had gotten into the annoying habit of coming out to bug him if she could see him hanging around outside so they’d migrated further back into the almost wild area that sat at the very bottom of their garden. At some point it became public property, leading out into some woods, but John wasn’t sure where exactly the property boundary was.

Roger squinted up at him, cheeks bulging out like a squirrel. He raised his eyebrows, exaggeratedly looking around them as he scrunched up his nose before continuing to chew.

“Not now,” John sighed, rolling his eyes. “In the future.”

Roger swallowed noisily. Even though John knew he did it just to see him react, he squirmed anyway.

“Presumably at some point,” Roger answered like the smart arse he was. “Who knows, maybe in a couple of months.”

“You’re such a dick,” John told him.

“Yup,” Roger said, smacking his lips obnoxiously. A fleck of half chewed bread stuck to his bottom lip as he did so. John didn’t tell him. Roger went to take another bite, raising the sandwich halfway to his mouth before sighing. “Yeah, it’s winter,” he admitted, squinting again. John thought he might need glasses, but that wasn’t exactly the sort of thing he could provide so he never brought it up. “Why?”

“You’re thin,” John blurted out without thinking, blushing immediately afterwards.

“Heroin chic, baby,” Roger winked, lounging backwards to pout at him dramatically. “I’m bringing it back. Reclaiming the imagery of poverty from the supermodels.”

He ripped a giant bite from the sandwich with bared teeth.

“Right,” John agreed dubiously. This was his third sandwich.

“Hey,” Roger said, snapping his fingers in John’s direction. John blinked. “Stop checking out my hot bod, alright? You’re too young to be tempted by all this goodness I’ve got going on.”

John felt his lip curl against his will. Roger looked as if he immediately regretted saying anything, eyes darting over him again.

“Too young, huh?” John muttered mulishly, tugging his hands free from his pockets to cross his arms against his chest. He slouched against the tree, “I’m sixteen, Roger. I’m not a kid anymore.”

“John,” Roger sighed, sitting up. He sat the remnants of the sandwich on his knee.

“I’m legal!” John exclaimed, agitation flaring under his skin. “I’m _sixteen!_”

“God,” Roger groaned, rubbing a hand over his face tiredly. “I want to say I’m not having this conversation with you again, but this is the first time I’m actually having it.”

John gaped at him, agitation transforming into full blown anger as he realised— “Are you? Have you been _conspiring _with yourself against me?”

“Yeah, John,” Roger retorted waspishly, rolling his eyes. “I’ve been having little tête-à-tête’s with myself about how to possibly resist committing statutory rape. That’s a thing that’s been going on, because when the totally fucked up situation of me _meeting myself _occurs, your teenage hormones are right at the top of my list of priorities.”

“Oh, come on,” John said, exasperated. “No one thinks of it like—”

“I do,” Roger interrupted him, tone flat. John shut his mouth with a click. “I don’t give a fuck what your friends think. It’s statutory rape. If you don’t understand why I, a twenty four year old man, would not want to fuck a sixteen year old boy? It means you’re too young.”

“Well, Veronica didn’t think I was too young last weekend,” John snapped, feeling a flush creep up his neck as he did so. The momentary feeling of victory he felt at slapping Roger in the face with… the loss of his virginity? Fled upon the realisation that Roger hadn’t so much as _flinched_.

No, Roger smiled at him instead.

“Was it good?” he asked, and John _hated _him.

John hated him so much because he loved him. Roger was everything, had always been everything. Roger was the worry that hit him when a snowstorm was predicted, and the contentment that washed over him softly during the safety of summer. Roger was the source of all his nightmares and the reason for all his dreams. The future was more of a home to him than the present because in the future Roger was _there _somewhere.

“Yeah,” he said softly, his anger collapsing like a house of cards as he moved to sit. “Yeah, it was.”

_It wasn’t you_, he wanted to say.

“Bit awkward?” Roger prompted, leaning forward into John’s space again. “My first time was… well. My first _proper _time was awkward as hell. Never fuck your best friend.”

John laughed, and it felt like crying.

*

(x)

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

There was no excitement in Veronica’s countenance. None of the joy and relief that John has hoped to have reflected back at himself after weeks of keeping this momentous life change to himself. Veronica was the only person who knew who Roger was, had heard his fears and hopes about what the future could hold for them.

But more importantly Veronica was his best friend. Even if he had other people to tell, she was the one he wanted to tell. He’d spent the past fortnight struggling to keep himself for spilling his guts every time she texted him and begging off of coffee dates as with each day that Roger _stayed _the reality of the present sunk in.

And she looked like she wanted to cry.

“Nothing, nothing,” she dismissed, waving a hand airily and blinking a tad too fast. “Honest,” she added, avoiding his gaze to focus on dragging a chip through the veritable ocean of ketchup she always insisted on when he ticked an eyebrow in response.

He took a drag from his pint and settled in to wait. If there was one thing John knew he was good at, it was waiting.

She chewed, and he drank.

At the bar, the bartender was explaining the plot of Inception to one of the old codger’s who looked as if he’d been welded to his seat a couple of decades ago and thus couldn’t escape.

“I just,” Veronica sighed, giving in first as she always did and tapping her fingernails against the table erratically. They were yellow this week. “I know you want me to be happy, and I want to be because I can see that you’re happy. But...” she trailed off, snatching his pint from his hand and draining it. He gave it up without a fight.

“But?” John prompted.

“You never even had a chance, John,” she exclaimed in a hushed whisper that drew more suspicious glances from the lunch time crowd than any shout. “You’ve been waiting for him since you were what? Five years old?”

“Six,” he corrected quietly, not entirely sure where this was going.

“Sorry,” she replied, a sardonic tinge to her voice as she rolled her eyes. “Six.”

“What’s that got to do with anythi—“

“You’ve been waiting for him since you were six years old, John! That’s not normal. That’s—“

“In case you hadn’t noticed,” John cut in sardonically, allowing himself to fall into the sibling-esque nastiness that was allowed between them purely because of the unconditional love they both new underlay their every interaction. He talked over her as she tried to keep finishing her sentence, knowing how much she hated it: “Nothing about my _time travelling boyfriend _is normal, Ronnie.”

Veronica glared at him mutinously from under her fringe.

“You wanted me to tell you what was wrong,” she said steadily, punctuated with a harsh exhale. Her hands were now placed on the table carefully, as if to keep her from reaching over and strangling him. “So you’re going to fucking well sit there and listen to what I have to say. Yes?”

With the admiral tact with which their profession was renowned, the bartender punched at the buttons on the jukebox until Journey’s Separate Ways started warbling around them.

John huffed, crossing his arms to slump against the back of the booth. “Go on then,” he grumbled, feeling all of a sudden as if he were back in his mum’s kitchen being told all over again that he wasn’t old enough to go to Keith Mulder’s birthday party.

He was starting to understand the guarded look Roger had given him when he’d excitedly informed him of his lunch plans over Facetime that morning.

“I’ve spent the last near decade hoping you never meet Roger again,” Ronnie told him, guilt spreading colour over her cheeks. She held up a hand as John, indignant, went to interrupt once again. “Because you deserve _better_, John. You never had a chance to find anyone else, because no one ever lived up to the memory of the man who practically shaped you into being what he wanted!”

“Come off it,” John scoffed, rolling his eyes. “He didn’t bloody groom me.”

“But he did!” Ronnie cried. “He did! I’m not saying he meant to, but he didn’t fucking try hard enough not to. You’ve spent your whole bloody life waiting around for him. You don’t date—”

“I date!”

“The closest you’ve ever come to dating,” Ronnie snapped, shaking her fringe from her eyes. “Was with me when you were seventeen, and you gave that up as soon as you realised it wasn’t making Roger jealous.”

“Ronnie,” John said softly, reaching out. His fingers just about brushed the back of her hand before she snatched it from his grasp.

“Oh, don’t be so bloody full of yourself, you wanker,” Ronnie sneered, lip curled. “I haven’t been pining after you, don’t worry yourself.”

“That’s not—”

“That shit’s all in the past,” she assured him, though there was little comfort to be found in her tone. “I’m allowed to be concerned about my best friend without being in love with you, even if you are a gigantic knobhead ninety percent of the time.”

She huffed and looked away from him, shooting a glare at the fella’s at the bar who were blatantly gawking at them. The bartender jacked up the jukebox, which would have been more welcome if she hadn’t put on a rotation of Separate Ways and Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain.

“Would we say ninety?” John ventured, appropriately cowed.

They didn’t bring up the awkward year for a reason; even hinting at it was a capital offence.

“You’re right,” she said, transferring her glare back to him. “Ninety-five.”

John held his hands up in surrender.

Ronnie sighed. “You just deserve better, John. You deserve better than waiting around for him to come back to you, and you deserve to have a choice.”

“I have a choice.”

“Do you?” she asked, the anger bleeding away and turning again into the sadness they had started with. “Or does he just keep turning up?”

*

(xiv)

Roger moved against him, rutting against his thigh as his tongue traced the tendon in his neck, and Roger thrust inside of him fluidly at the exact right angle to have his entire world sparking brightly as his nerves lit up.

Everything was Roger.

*

(ii)

John was fifteen when he finally drudged up the courage to ask: “How come your wedding ring comes with you?”

Roger, in the middle of going over his Hamlet essay, paused.

“Nothing else does,” John continued, barrelling onwards. “So, how come that doesn’t stay behind too?”

“I guess,” Roger said thoughtfully, scratching something out from the page in front of him before abandoning the paper entirely to squint over at him. The shed was always a bit of a nightmare — filled with cobwebs, shadows, and tools that hadn’t seen much use since his dad had passed — but it was getting cold now that autumn was in full swing.

Roger got cagey in the cold.

“I guess,” he repeated, twisting his ring as he spoke. “I’ve always thought of it like…. Travelling is proper shit, right?”

John tried not to react like he’d been slapped.

“It’s… really not great. I can’t control where I go, or when I go; I can’t control anything. But everything’s got balance, right?” he waited for John to nod, which he did dutifully despite his confusion. “In nature, and religion, whatever. Everything’s balanced out. So the way I see it, right, is that I can’t control anything _but _somehow I revisit you a lot, yeah? Somehow I keep my ring.”

“I don’t understand.”

Roger smiled and shrugged, turning back to the essay. He picked up the pen anew: “There’s a lot of shit, but there’s a lot of good too.”

“And I’m the good?” John asked, eager and shy all at once behind a shaky facade of nonchalance.

“You’re the best,” Roger told him assuredly, looking over his shoulder at him. “But I have no fucking clue what your thesis here is, come explain.”

John sighed.

*

(xi)

“It’s not my fault, John!”

John lay his head flat against the mirror, meeting the gaze of his own reflection. He spat out the froth of his toothpaste and turned on the faucet to run the remnants away, letting the bowl shine clean in the harsh fluorescent of their bathroom.

“I didn’t say it was,” he said, dropping his toothbrush in the chipped mug on the side of the sink. He turned to face Roger, who was propped in the doorway with a harsh frown on his face. “But I’m allowed to be disappointed that you couldn’t meet Julie. Again.”

Roger exhaled heavily. It wasn’t a sigh, not quite. Rather, it was a purposeful sign of his frustration carefully presented in such a manner that John couldn’t comment upon it without Roger claiming the innocence of tiredness.

And both of them knew it.

“I don’t get to choose when I travel,” Roger reminded him. “Believe me, I wish I did—“

“I know!” John snapped, slapping a hand against the porcelain of the sink harshly. “I know you can’t choose! Just like I can’t pick and choose when you travel either! I can’t pick and choose anything, I—“

Roger inhaled sharply.

“I didn’t mean—“ John said, straightening as he realised just where he’d trod.

“No,” Roger shook his head, stepping backwards. “You can choose anything you want, John. Don’t you _dare _say you can’t.”

Frustration and helplessness clagged in John’s lungs. It felt like the sound of Roger’s hacking cough from the summer last, when the doctors had wondered at his pneumonia in the A&E.

“I can’t!” he shouted, words bursting out of him wholly without his permission. “My _entire _life has been outside of my control since I was six years old, you have no idea what it’s like for m—“

Roger shoved away from the door before he could so much as finish his sentence.

“Oh!” John exclaimed, moving to follow him into the hallway and through to their bedroom. “Are we going to run away now, then? Going to run away from me again?”

Roger whirled around to glare at him from where he was stood next to their bed. “I have _never_,” he spat, shoving an accusing finger in John’s direction. “Run away from you.”

He bent down, pulling a duffle bag from under the bed.

“What the fuck do you call this then?” John scoffed, gesturing at him as he began shoving clothes in the bag haphazardly. “It sure looks like you’re running to me!”

“I,” Roger ground out, tugging on the zipper of the duffle bag. “Am going to stay with Freddie for a while.”

They stared across the room at one another.

John didn’t know what to say. Good? No, don’t, stay?

None of it felt right.

Nothing felt right.

It wasn’t meant to be like this.

Roger sighed. A real sigh this time. A tired one. A sigh borne of the exhaustion that came from toeing the invisible line in every argument, of trying to avoid the one block that could either make you the winner or see the whole Jenga tower come tumbling down around you.

He walked towards John, pausing in the doorway next to him. The hairsbreadth of distance between them felt like miles. The hairsbreadth of distance between them felt like _years_.

“I’m never going to be normal,” Roger told him softly, and John couldn’t breathe. “And it’s okay if you need to walk away. I won’t blame you for that. I’m sorry, so sorry, that I can’t be normal for you now. For you then.”

John couldn’t speak.

“I’m gonna stay with Freddie,” Roger continued, hitching the duffle over his shoulder. “I’ll… I’ll come get my stuff in two weeks? If-- if you need me to.”

John couldn’t move, stuck to the spot as Roger manoeuvred around him carefully as if he were scared to touch him. As if he wasn’t allowed; like they hadn’t been curled up in the very bed that John was facing that morning, drowsing in that Saturday morning light and whispering about the fucking _gas bill_.

The front door closed. It didn’t slam, but instead clipped shut softly with a click.

John curled his hand into a fist and breathed in deeply. His fingernails dug into the soft skin of his palm as he fought the urge to scream. To scream that this was the opposite of what he wanted; the opposite of everything he had ever wanted. Left here, alone. Left alone, again, over and over.

Roger was always leaving him, and always coming back.

It was cruel.

*

(xviii)

John relaxed against Roger’s chest as the water lapped about them soothingly. He let his head fall back until it rested in the crook of Roger’s shoulder and stuck his feet over the edge of the tub where they dangled in the cool air. He was too tall for it by far, particularly in this position, and Roger’s hatred of the cold meant he ran his water to the point of scalding.

They’d be as red as lobsters by the end, once Roger had topped it up once, twice, perhaps even thrice. His torso was still a myriad of colours from his last travel, and John still felt guilty enough over Roger trying to hide his injuries from him until the _dinner party _was over, to let him go for four if he really wanted.

The water bill was next month’s problem.

He dozed again Roger contentedly, vaguely aware of the way Roger was lazily marking patterns against his skin with his ever fidgeting fingers.

“I love you,” Roger said softly, the words trickling like honey through the air that hung heavy with steam.

John hummed in response, ducking a quick brush of his lips against Roger’s throat before settling back into his previous position. There would be time for sweet exchanges later, right now he was comfortable and had no plans of moving.

Roger’s hand moved up from his wrist, where he had been steadily marking the beat of his pulse against the soft skin that lay there, to his ribs. He slotted his fingers within the spaces between and, as if he were playing a piano, scaled his way up.

John squirmed. “Rog,” he slurred, drunk on the heady drowse of a Sunday afternoon spent in the arms of a lover with nowhere to be, and nothing to do. “Rog, tha’ _tickles_.”

“Hmm,” Roger hummed, and his hand smoothed down apologetically.

In the sink, precariously balanced in an attempt to boost its acoustics, his phone was playing the soft strains of a song that later John couldn’t recall no matter how he tried.

“_Roger_,” he grunted, glaring up at him blearily as he played his scales along his ribs again.

He was looking down at him and John felt unworthy. Sometimes he would catch him watching him as if he held the secrets of the universe under his skin; as if he held the world aloft on his shoulders and had been thus far unaware. Roger would look at him and for a moment, before that ever awful curse of self awareness stripped the haze of another’s love from one’s own sense of being, John would feel beautiful.

Beautiful, and wanted, and cared for; something delicate, desirable, _divine_.

Capable of being devoured but chosen to worship instead.

Was that not love?

“Marry me?” Roger asked, his gaze not wavering from John’s own.

John paused, tasting the question on the back of his throat as he breathed deep. It tasted like coming home after a long journey. He ducked a kiss to the column of Roger’s throat again and settled back down, entangling their fingers.

There would be time for sweet exchanges later.

(vi)

“I might not be back for a while,” Roger said just as John was on the verge of sleep, his head pillowed on his lap.

John jerked, eyes flying open as the haze of sleep dissipated with all the subtlety of a gunshot in a crowded room. “What? What do you mean?”

Roger shrugged, tugging absently on a lock of hair that was growing long and unruly behind his ear. He’d started growing out a couple of months prior, right before his exams had started. “I don’t think I’ll be back here for a bit.”

“Why?” John asked, scrambling off of Roger’s lap, paying no attention to the grass stains that now covered his trousers. “Wait, no,” he rubbed at his eyes impatiently as the world tried to come back into focus. Roger was, of course, in crisp technicolour even as everything else faded into the kind of distortion that had John’s fingers itching to get at the TV antennae and put things back to rights. “_How_?”

Roger opened his mouth to answer but was cut off by the sound of Julie calling John in for dinner from the house.

“Rog,” John whispered, not ashamed in the slightest at the tremble his voice held. “Rog, you can’t know that. You don’t have control of it, you said so yourself.”

“John!” Julie called from the back porch.

“I’m coming!” he bellowed over his shoulder impatiently. “Fuck off!”

“Ugh,” Julie bitched, the back door slamming behind her loudly. “Mum, John’s too busy playing with his imaginary friend to come to dinner. Better make up an extra plate for the rabbit.”

The soft murmur of his mother’s scolding echoed out of the open kitchen window and into the back yard.

“If I had control of it I’d be coming back,” Roger told him, matching his own soft tone. “I swear to you, John. I’d come back tomorrow, if I could.”

“I don’t _understand_,” John said.

And he didn’t. He didn’t understand at all. Roger had been the one constant in his life for as long as he could remember. In the midst of growing up and growing older, during all the pains that leaving childhood behind contained, even when his dad had died… There had always been Roger. For a short visit or a long one, Roger was the one constant inconstant that John could depend. Every couple of weeks, there he would be.

John had _plans_. It was the summer, his last summer before university. It was the summer, his last before university, and he turned eighteen in three weeks.

This was all wrong.

*

(ix)

“John!” Veronica shouted into his ear, climbing onto his back like a drunken octopus. “John! Isn’t this so much fun!”

She’d dragged him to some club she’d heard about through a friend of a friend whose step brother did the drag night on Thursday nights. The friend of a friend had definitely been angling for an audience for their step brother but had made the mistake of mentioning the 2-for-1 deal on sambuca shots that ran on Saturday nights.

“Jooooohn,” she whined, bouncing up and down with her legs wrapped around his waist. Instinctively he let his hands wrap around her knees to keep her balanced and she smacked a loud kiss to his cheek in thanks.

“You’re gonna get us kicked out, drunkie,” John told her, laughing despite himself as she bounced again.

Veronica clambered down with a sigh, “The club is fun but you’re not.”

“You love me anyway,” John said, wrapping an arm over her shoulders as she came to stand next to him. A guy jostled him on his way past to the bar, and he stumbled further into her.

“And _I’m _the drunk one?” she laughed, steadying him.

He stuck his tongue out at her and she, being the disgusting person she was, darted in to press her tongue against his own.

“I was gonna ask if you wanted to dance,” John said, stumbling backwards with a grimace. “But after that I don’t wanna.” Veronica was half bent over with laughter, paying no mind to the wide berth the other patrons were giving her as John wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. “You’re fucking disgusting,” he grunted as she began to pull herself bak together.

“You’ve had my tongue on your dick but you draw the line at it in your mouth?” Veronica asked with a pout, the club lights flashing over her as she blinked at him with exaggerated innocence.

“I’m a classy lady,” John deadpanned.

Veronica choked on a laugh and draped herself over him again in an approximation of a hug. “A bold faced lie if I ever heard one,” she giggled, panting hot air into his ear. John fought the urge to squirm away, staying valiantly still. “Oh!” she gasped, pushing off of him and making to head away. “Stacey!”

And like that she was gone.

John found himself blinking after her for a few moments before making his way over to the bar. There was only one bartender, looking incredibly stressed out as he poured endless shots of sambuca, at the other end of the bar. John resigned himself to a long wait.

“Your girlfriend’s abandoned you!”

John coked his head to meet the gaze of the man next to him.

“Freddie,” the guy, Freddie, greeted him and held out a hand for John to shake.

“John,” he replied, going to shake. A surprised laugh was punched out of him when Freddie ducked to kiss the back of his hand instead. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Oh?” Freddie said, quirking an eyebrow as he looked up at him coyly through his eyelashes. “Partner? Boyfriend? I apologise, I know better than to assume.”

“No, no,” John answered, charmed despite himself. “Just a friend.”

Freddie stepped in closer until they were almost chest to chest and trailed restless fingers up John’s arm, tracing a meandering path that only he could see. “Interesting,” he murmured, head tilted and lips parted just a touch.

“And you?” John asked. The drink dulled the itch at the back of his neck that made him want to take a hasty step back and re-establish his boundaries, but it was still there.

“Single, darling,” Freddie said with a sly smirk.

“Good to know,” John laughed, catching the eye of a second bartender who had appeared out of nowhere and gesturing for a drink — _just one_, he motioned when she held up two shot glasses. “But I meant are you here alone?”

“Do I look like the kind of gal that goes anywhere alone?” Freddie responded with a wobble of his head and a vaguely obnoxious flutter of his eyelashes.

“Hence my disbelief.”

Freddie laughed, the flirtation melting off of him as John threw back his shot. “I’ll take two, sweetheart,” he shouted over the music to the bartender with a wink. “No, I’m here with a mate.”

John hummed through the burn of the liquor.

“He’s powdering his nose,” Freddie told him conspiratorially, wrinkling his own nose up as he did. The bartender slid the shots across the bar to him, waving him off as he thrust his card at her to pay.

“A regular?” John asked as Freddie shoved his card back into his pocket with a roll of his eyes.

“Oh, that boy could find a line in a sober living house,” Freddie laughed, pushing one of the shots at John before downing his own without so much as a flinch. “Could pick up a gig as a sniffer dog, honest. But then,” he paused, reaching over the bar to drop his empty glass down into the sink. “No, he’d sniff ‘em out but he’d sniff ‘em up too.”

John didn’t know what to say to that, and downed his shot instead of replying.

“Speak of the devil and he will appear,” Freddie huffed as John gasped through the shot of unexpected tequila. “Roger!” he shouted.

John froze.

“You _slag_,” Freddie hooted with a cackle. “Come meet my new friend!”

John turned and it felt like a rotation around the sun. The lights flashed and the music grew louder. Time, ever fickle and unreliable, slowed until years had passed in the blink of an eye and there, stood only yards away, was—

“John?” Roger breathed, barely audible in the frenzy of the room and yet louder than anything he’d ever heard before, staring at him as if he were the only person in the club, in the _world_.

Behind him, Freddie muttered something bitterly (“Of _course_ you know Roger.”) before pushing off of the bar to stagger back amongst the crowd. John paid him no mind.

“_John_,” Roger repeated, stronger now as a blinding smile worked its way upon his face. He was beautiful; hair somewhere between long and short, and wearing the most ridiculous outfit that John had ever seen—

“What year is it?” John blurted out, caught on the very cusp of euphoria; the heart stopping moment before free fall into oblivion.

“The right one,” Roger said, his hand reaching out to touch even as he stood rooted to the spot. “It’s the right one.”

John couldn’t tell you how he ended up holding Roger’s face in his hands. Time had, once again, escaped its expected confines and run amok. He blinked, and Roger was under his touch. He blinked, and Roger was allowing him hold him as he had never done before.

“I didn’t even want to come out tonight,” John whispered, his eyes darting over Roger’s features. He couldn’t stop himself from drinking him in, that old forgotten need to take all of him that he could before time whisked him away again pulling him under.

“You’re such a bastard,” Roger told him, although the wonder that clung to the edges of his voice soothed any sting that could have resulted from his words. “I saw you — yesterday — and you didn’t _say._”

“Turn about’s fair play,” John murmured, barely able to believe that this was happening. Here, in this dingy club he hadn’t even wanted to come to, Roger was under his hands. After so long.

Roger laughed, his head falling forwards into the crook of John’s neck. “That’s what you always say,” Roger said, his voice almost lost to John’s skin as his lips brushed against it.

_That’s what you always say_ echoed in John’s mind. He let out a shaky breath and guided Roger’s head back up from his shoulder. _That’s what you always say._

Even if Roger disappeared, even if time dragged them apart again, Roger would be coming back this time.

He cusped Roger’s face between his hands again. “Can I?” he asked, feeling the soft exhale of Roger’s own breathing against his own lips as he spoke. The club, if it still existed, had fallen away around them and all that John could perceive was Roger and the air, the history, the _future_ they shared between them.

“Please.”

*

**Author's Note:**

> wooo!!!! joger week!!!!! i fucking suck!!!!! two days late but ya know ya live ya learn!!!! i cant be trusted, we know this. my time management is almost as bad as roger's in this fic [ba dum tish]
> 
> day one prompts: soulmates, time travel, children, cocaine


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